


Apples

by cosmosatyrus



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-04
Updated: 2009-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmosatyrus/pseuds/cosmosatyrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apples and madmen and doctors - the fates weave patterns in the fabric of the Universe. Written much too late at night under the influence of the end of the semester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apples

_****_When the ship arrives with supplies, it's two weeks early and it's five days too late. Four thousand men, women and children, categorized by physical fitness, intelligence score, and number and type of markers for genetic disorders, were taken to the death chambers so that the rest would live. Silos once filled with grain now held bodies and a burned-out building was all that was left of the man who had given the order. He tried to forget the brown-haired kid with the angular face whose parents didn't make the cut. He tried to forget the face and the voice that poured poison into the ears of the colonists. Some had volunteered - _volunteered_ \- to go. They walked willingly toward death. The rest went at the point of a phaser. He tried to forget the chaos, the riots, the smell of death that hung in the air like a whore's perfume.

A doctor in blue with dark hair and a soft voice takes his arm, "Come with me." The medbay is bright, but comforting. Nurses in white keep him connected to tubes that deliver calories to his system and after two weeks, he starts eating again. The nurses have to keep him from taking food too fast and the doctor in blue touches him, "Slow down, Jimmy. Nobody's going to take it away from you." The kid two beds down is crying, still too weak to be off the tubes. His name is Kevin and there's a brown-haired nurse who just holds his hand for hours.  
The first real thing he eats that isn't broth or gruel is an apple. The dark-haired doctor brings it to him and quips, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," and it's the most precious thing in the universe. He takes small, slow bites and savors each crunch and no one takes it away. He eats it down to the core and then eats the core, nothing wasted.

Years later, there's a dark haired doctor in red and his voice is as smooth as a backcountry road. At lunch, the doctor in red hands him an apple and quips, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

He puts it in his pocket because no one will take it away. "Thanks, Bones, but I don't think I could keep you away with a whole bushel of apples." He takes it out during the test and eats it, slow bites, one at a time. The algorithm works and he beats the test because he can and he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. He eats the apple to its core and he eats the core, nothing wasted. A few days later, they find out what he did, but he's not sorry. When disaster strikes, thousands of cadets are categorized by class, rank, GPA, performance and study track and assigned to the Farragut, the Hood, the Antares, the Mayflower, the Truman, the Newton, the Armstrong, the Wolcott, and the Enterprise. This time, Jim doesn't make the cut.

The doctor in red takes his arm, "Come with me." The medbay of the Enterprise is bright, but something tickles the back of his memory and he runs toward the bridge. The dark haired doctor, now in blue, chases after him, "Slow down, Jim! You've got to keep your heart rate down!" When the ship arrives at Vulcan, they're a few minutes late, a few minutes early. They had all volunteered and walked willingly toward death, their ships now broken and hanging like charred ornaments in space. When the day is done and Earth is safe and a black hole is all that's left of the man who destroyed Vulcan, he's in medbay again and the doctor in blue reaches into his core and consumes him somehow. "It's okay, Jim. Nobody's going take you away from me." Two beds down, a brown-haired Lieutenant with an angular face sits next to one of the beds and holds the hand of a crewman as she cries.


End file.
